Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF SURVIVAL
The cold storage facility smelled of ammonia, old ice, and rusted iron. I brought Evelyn and Clara into the foreman’s old office—the only room with an electric space heater that still worked. I plugged it in, watching the orange coils slowly hum to life, casting a warm, flickering glow over the room’s cracked cinderblock walls.
I found an old army cot in the corner, covered it with clean wool blankets from my car's survival kit, and lifted Evelyn onto it. She let out a long sigh as the artificial heat finally touched her ruined legs.
Clara stood by the doorway, her hands wrapped tightly around the small silver locket resting against her collarbone. For fifteen years, she had worn it thinking it was merely a keepsake of a father she barely remembered. Now, knowing it carried the blood of both her father and the entire Moretti dynasty, she looked as though the tiny piece of metal were burning her flesh.
“Take it off,” I said gently, stepping toward her.
She looked at me with wide, frightened eyes, but she didn't run. She unclipped the chain and placed the silver heart into my open palm.
Using the tip of my pocketknife, I pried open the hidden seam behind the faded photograph of a smiling young man in a harbor uniform. A wafer-thin micro-drive dropped into my hand.
I walked over to the ancient desktop computer sitting on the desk, booted the terminal through a secure VPN satellite link, and slotted the drive into the USB port.
The screen flickered, then rows upon rows of encrypted files unspooled across the monitor: bank routing numbers, Swiss account manifests, port shipping manifests, and recorded phone conversations dating back nearly two decades.
And there it was.
An audio file dated November 14, fifteen years ago.
I clicked play.
Silvio Rossi’s voice crackled through the tinny speakers:
‘The auditor is at the bottom of Lake Michigan. His wife is a nobody—she won’t talk if she knows what’s good for her kid. Now handle Don Antonio’s brat. Make it look like a drunk driver hit his car on the Dan Ryan. With both the auditor and Dante gone, Antonio will have no choice but to name me sole trustee of the entire syndicate.’
Then, a second voice replied. A voice I would know anywhere.
‘Consider it done, Mr. Rossi. I’ll make sure Dante burns until there’s nothing left to bury.’
It was Lorenzo.
Lorenzo had been working for Silvio since before I even shaved. The man who had stood at my right hand for seven years, the man who called me his brother, had personally set the fire that burned Evelyn Vance’s legs to cinders.
“My God,” Clara gasped, covering her mouth as the recording ended.
I didn't speak. The rage inside me had passed beyond shouting, beyond trembling. It had settled into an icy, absolute vacuum. Every breath I took felt crisp, lethal, and clear.
“Dante,” Evelyn called from the cot. She was watching me with an expression that carried neither pity nor fear. “What are you going to do?”
“Silvio controls forty percent of the captains,” I said, turning away from the glowing screen. “He controls the judges, the port police, and half the city council. If I walk into the Commission with this drive, half of them will side with him just to avoid a street war that burns down their businesses.”
“Then we run,” Clara said desperately, taking a step toward me. “Take us away from here. You have money, don’t you? You can buy us a house somewhere warm—somewhere in Florida or California where they can’t find us! We don't need revenge, Mr. Moretti! We just want to live!”
“You can’t run from Silvio Rossi, Clara,” Evelyn said quietly. “He has eyes in every airport, every bus station, every hospital. If Dante runs, he dies. And without Dante, you and I won’t survive a week.”
She was right. The only way out of a mafia blood feud was straight through the center of the grave.
Suddenly, the red emergency beacon above the loading dock doors began to pulse silently.
The perimeter motion sensors had tripped.
I moved to the office window and peered through the blinds into the gloom of the warehouse floor.
The main rolling door hadn't been forced, but three shadows were slipping through the high ventilation ducts above the refrigeration units. Red laser sights danced across the concrete floor like hunting spiders.
Lorenzo hadn't tracked the car.
He had tracked the micro-drive’s decryption signal the moment I opened it on an open network.
“They’re here,” I said, chambering a round into my Kimber .45 and pulling a tactical shotgun from the wall locker behind the desk. “Clara, get behind the steel desk with your mother. Do not come out until I call your name. No matter what you hear.”
May you like
Clara looked at me, tears streaming down her face, but this time she didn't hesitate. She threw herself over Evelyn’s body on the cot, shielding her mother with her own flesh.
I turned off the office light, racked the shotgun slide with a sharp metallic clack, and stepped out into the blackness of the warehouse.
